A typical disk array may have one or more interfaces for communicating with a host server system, and one or more interfaces for communicating with the disk drives. The interfaces for communicating with the host might use any of various different host communication technologies, for example, 10 gigabit Ethernet or 10 gigabit Fibrechannel or ISCSI. The interfaces for communicating with the disks might use and of various storage channel technologies, for example, 2 Gigabit Fibrechannel or SATA. As storage technology improves, disk drives continue to become smaller and denser. Storage channel technologies continue to increase in speed, and new storage technologies are continually introduced. Storage systems therefore continue to be re-designed in order to take advantage of the smaller, denser drives and higher speed technologies to provide systems offering larger amounts of storage space that are more quickly accessible.
The disk array systems of today typically consist of a single board that contains control logic and I/O interface logic. Or, a system might include several boards containing control logic and I/O interface logic in a manner whereby the I/O interface logic cannot be changed once the system is manufactured. Thus, if a customer currently has a 2 Gigabit Fibrechannel interface, but wants to upgrade to a 10 Gigabit Fibrechannel interface, the entire chassis must be replaced. Furthermore, many different types of chassis must be manufactured—one for each possible combination of disk and host I/O interfaces.
It would be advantageous to provide a storage system architected such that a storage chassis could accept different types of I/O modules such that various technologies and I/O densities can be installed in a storage chassis.